Aisthetische Reduktionen. Analysen zu Patrick Süskinds "Der Kontrabaß," "Das Parfum," und "Rossini"
2005; Wiley; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1756-1183
Autores Tópico(s)German Literature and Culture Studies
ResumoDegler, Frank. Aisthetische Reduktionen. Analysen zu Patrick Suskinds und Rossini. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003. 386 pp. euro98.00 hardcover. Given that Suskind has not published a literary work since the screenplay for Rossini (co-written with Helmut Dietl) in 1997, a comprehensive study of his Gesamtwerk seems viable at this point in time. This is what Degler offers: the first book-length analysis of the collected works of a writer who has penned some of the most popular literary texts of German postmodernism. Although Degler focuses mainly on Suskind's bestknown and most successful pieces (Der Kontrabas, Das Parfum, and Rossini), he also interpolates shorter sections on the author's minor prose and teleplays. The guiding concept of the study-aisthetische Reduktion-is understood as a perspective that limits the perceptual purview of its protagonist to a single sensory realm-in the case of Das Parfum to the olfactory, or in Der Konntrabas to the acoustic sense. By creating characters who perceive their world with a sensory deficit, so Degler, the author is able to limit the complexity of their fictional world and thus return to a more traditional style of story-telling that restores the narrative potential of contemporary German fiction. Citing various theorists and writers to support his thesis, Degler advances the idea that eine Wiederkehr des Erzahlens is the hallmark of Suskind's writing and the obvious key to his popular success. As a result, Degler credits Suskind with having almost single-handedly engineered the come-back of contemporary German literature, after having lost itself and its readership in the rarified complexities of high modernism. Indeed, in the 1990s, after the world-wide success of Suskind's Das Parfum, one observes a striking increase in novels that employ various strategies of sensory reduction. In the German context, Marcel Beyer's Flughunde (1996) and Robert Schneider's Schlafes Bruder (1992), for example, feature a reduction to acoustic perceptions. Throughout his book, Degler compares aisthetische Reduktion with the economy of screenwriting, which out of technical necessity conforms to the strict limitations of filmmaking. These restrictions are comparable to the sensory reductiveness of Suskind's approach, which derives from his experience as a screenwriter. This insight is the most useful aspect of the book, and, one is forced to admit, a very obvious one, given the fact that long before the popular success of Rossini in 1997, Suskind was an accomplished screenwriter with TV scripts like Monaco Franze (1983) and Kir Royal (1986) to his credit. …
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